Violence in the Old Testament - part 4

This is part 4 of a series. See part 1, part 2, part 3.

To summarise what I've said so far:

1. Much of the violence of the Old Testament is the result of human decisions and actions. The fact that such violence is not always condemned outright by the writers of the Old Testament does not necessarily mean that they are condoning it. (Part 1).

2. What causes the most difficulty for readers of the Old Testament, and arouses the greatest vitriol from its critics, is the fact that in some places God himself is the one commanding or carrying out the violence. How can a God who is described as loving and kind to all that he has made (by the Old Testament writers as well as the New) be involved in acts of violence and destruction?

3. Ignoring this problem is not a solution, nor is explaining it away by assuming that the Old Testament writers got it wrong or put words into God's mouth. (Part 2). However, it is true that the writers sometimes used militaristic metaphors for God's activity which we don't always find helpful.

4. God, as the uncreated creator, owner and sustainer of the world, does not have the same limitations that human beings have and his actions cannot be subjected to the same analysis or restrictions that we would apply to another human being. This is not the same as saying 'might is right'. A teacher who keeps a child from going out to play because of unfinished work is using their authority and wisdom to discipline the child. A child who stands at the door to prevent another child from going out to play is a bully.

5. Violence is generally perceived negatively. However it can be used positively in two situations - in creative (and re-creative) processes and in applying justice. (part 3)

Joshua and the Battle of Jericho

Let's look now at a specific example of God's use of violence, one which most people find disturbing.


It's found in the book of Joshua, chapters 5:13-6:27. Following the famous six-day march around the walls of the city of Jericho the walls fell and  Israelites attacked the city and slaughtered every man woman and child, and even the animals found in it. The only people spared were Rahab, the prostitute who had sheltered the Israelite men sent to spy on the city, and her family.

The slaughter was consistent with the command given by God to the Israelites before they entered the land of Canaan (Deuteronomy 20:16-17.)

" However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them – the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites – as the Lord your God has commanded you."

The reason given for this annihilation is in the next verse:

"Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshipping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God."

The "However" of verse 16 refers back to the previous paragraph, in which the Israelites were told to make an offer of peace to any cities they besieged outside the promised land of Canaan (Deut 20:10-15). If the peace offer wasn't accepted, they could then engage the men in battle. The women and children of the city could be taken as booty.

This was standard practice at the time. Even the brutal Assyrians and Babylonians of a later period didn't slaughter every living thing when they took a city. Unlike the standard practices of the time, the Israelites were told that women captured in this way were to be treated with respect and kindness and were not to be traded as slaves after they were taken as marriage partners. (Deut 21:10-15).

Still, this is all pretty horrendous. It's also confusing - if the women and children of Canaan were to be slaughtered because of the risk that they would teach the Israelites to worship false gods, why did the women and children of the cities outside Canaan not pose the same risk?

Did the Canaanites deserve what they got?

Many commentators argue that the Canaanites were a particularly nasty bunch who practised sorcery, child sacrifice and religious prostitution. They had been given 400 years to repent before the Israelites arrived and had failed to do so. Their destruction was an act of judgement on God's part for their sinfulness. (See Genesis 15:16)

It's also argued that the cities that the Israelites attacked (such as Jericho) were actually quite small - a few thousand people at most - and the majority of the Canaanite people who lived outside the cities were driven out or accommodated rather than killed. (This is supported by Judges 1:28 and other references). If the women and children had been spared, they would have had no means of support and might have starved to death or been taken by marauding slave traders.

We could also note here that our attitude to the killing of "innocent" children along with adults is not shared by the writers of the Old Testament. Children were generally considered an extension of their parents, for better or worse, until they reached the age of deciding for themselves. Jesus shocked his followers when he treated children as worthy of his attention in their own right.

When Abraham argued with God to spare the city of Sodom if there were even ten righteous people living in it, God agreed. In the end the city was destroyed. (See Genesis 18:16-33, 19:24-29). Presumably there were children in the city, but their guilt or innocence wasn't mentioned or taken into account.

A third line of argument often seen is that the taking of Canaan was a unique event. God was establishing the community from which the future saviour of the world would come. Drastic measures were needed to ensure that it would not be corrupted. Witnessing the slaughter of the Canaanites would serve as a terrible reminder to the Israelite people of what would happen to them if they too practised abominations and turned to other gods.

The fourth line of argument is that since God has the life of every human being in his hand, it ultimately makes no difference how he chooses to end a life - at birth, at the point of a sword in war or by heart failure in old age. It is still God's call. And who knows what happened to any innocent children after their death. Perhaps they went straight to heaven.

Golden calf
Image by Gerard van der Leun

All of these arguments have some support from scripture. But none are entirely satisfying.The Israelites weren't a particularly wholesome bunch themselves before they got to Canaan. Even without Canaanite corruption to emulate, they had already constructed a golden calf to worship and were constantly on the verge of apostasy. In fact, God knew that they would turn to other gods and be driven out of the promised land before they had even entered it (Deut 31:14-29).

Killing children to punish their parents for practising child sacrifice seems an odd thing to do. And slaughter is slaughter, even if it's 'only' a few thousand people.

At this point we could decide to stop reading the Old Testament. It's just too hard to understand. But let's not do that. Let's assume that God really did give this command to slaughter an entire city.

Is there an answer or do we have the wrong question?

Our first question is always "Why?" We want to come up with reasons that will satisfy our sense that something is seriously wrong here. We want to find explanations that will defend God against the charge that he is a sadistic monster, or, at the very least, hypocritical when he calls on us to love our enemies.

We first need to be clear that God doesn't need defending. Nor does he have any obligation to answer our questions. He is not the president or prime minister, who needs to keep us on-side to get re-elected. Since we know from the rest of scripture that God is both just and trustworthy, we must trust that in those place where he seems to act in a way that is difficult to understand or inconsistent, he has his good and just reasons.

Arguments that stress the wickedness of the Canaanites are in some ways missing the point. The whole Old Testament serves to show us that God's choice of the Israelites had nothing to do with their virtues or merit. They were chosen by God's grace. None of us deserve God's favour.  In one sense, the marvel is not that God's judgement fell on the Canaanites or the Amorites or whoever, but that he spared the Israelites over and over again.

But what if we were to ask a different question: "How did the author of Joshua 5 and 6 want us to respond to this passage?" Did he unquestioningly believe that the Canaanites in Jericho deserved what they got? Are we supposed to cheer? Or did he perhaps want to evoke a horrified response from us? Is this meant to be a reminder of what God's justice looks like without God's mercy?

The Angel of the Lord decimates the Assyrian Army
from Petrus Comestor's 'Bible Historiale',
France, 1372 via Wikimedia Commons

And then another question: Why did God use the Israelites to carry out the slaughter of the people of Jericho? Why not wipe them out himself, if he was simply executing justice on them? He did that in other places (eg 2 Chronicles 32:20-21).

Two things are clear from the passage and what follows. First, God took responsibility for the slaughter. Left to themselves, the Israelites would no doubt have done a pretty good job of it, but God, by giving the command, took the responsibility away from them and on to himself.

Second, God was acting on his own behalf and not on behalf of the Israelites. In an often overlooked incident just before the battle of Jericho, Joshua had a strange encounter:

When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. (Joshua 5:13-15, ESV)

And that was it -  there was no other message given. Whatever this battle was about, it was not about God going in to bat for the Israelites.

Third, God already knew that establishing a 'holy' society by eradicating the 'evil' people that were already in the land wasn't going to work. Deuteronomy 31 tells us that. Some would argue that the Israelites didn't carry out the eradication properly and that is why it failed. But surely it failed because the Israelites were already corrupt before they got to Canaan. They didn't need Canaanite encouragement to become idolators.

Could it be that part of what the Bible is showing us here is that trying to set up a holy people based on 'ethnic cleansing' will not work? It will fail, not because the cleansing isn't done well, but because the 'cleansers' are not clean themselves.

The same could be said of much of the sanctioned violence that we find so disturbing in the Old Testament. Removing the foreign idol worshippers from the land didn't work. Executing blasphemous Israelites didn't work. Stoning adulterers and murderers didn't work. Sacrificing untold  bulls, sheep and goats didn't work. An exclusive society with unrivalled access to God and his law was not enough to bring in the Kingdom of God.  Something else was required.